The Nativity and the Procession of the Magi

Images(2)

The Nativity and the Procession of the Magi

Artist Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) Italian, 1444/1445–1510

Date1480s

MediumTempera on panel

DimensionsDiameter: 49 1/2 in. (125.7 cm)
Frame Diameter: 70 1/8 in. (178.1 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberGL.60.17.26

On View

On view

ProvenanceCreated Italy, 1444/1445–1510; John Francis Austen (1817–1893), Capel Manor, Horsmonden, Kent, by 1893 [1]; [Austen estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, March 18, 1921, lot 77, unsold] [2]; [Christie, Manson & Woods, London July 10, 1931, lot 45]; [Smith] [3]. Possibly the Lord Crawford and Balcarres Collection, London, after 1931 [4]. [International Financing Co., S. A., Panama, possibly a shell company for the estate of Alessandro Contini Bonacossi] [5]; Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, November 30, 1956, inv. no. K2155 [6]; Kress Foundation gift to NCMA, 1961.

[1] Kress digital record: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3323. Lent by Charlotte Austen, née Tucker and widow of John Francis Austen, to the 1893-1894 exhibition “Early Italian Art” at the New Gallery, London, cat. 30. John Francis Austen is distantly related to the novelist Jane Austen. John Francis’s great-grandfather was the uncle and guardian of Jane Austen’s father.

[2] “Catalogue of Important Italian Pictures of the Late J. F. Austen, Esq. of Capel Manor, Horsmonden, Kent (Sold by Order of the Trustees),” 1921, lot 77. Annotated copy lists and amount for which it was sold and “Wells,” though the painting was unsold. Roberts, 2009, p. 610, lists the painting as unsold.

[3] Christie’s 1931, lot 45. Smith is listed as the buyer in two different annotated sale catalogue copies (photocopies in curatorial file). Lightbown, 1978, p. 135 states that the painting was sold to “Briggs.”

[4] Source of this information is Kress Foundation paperwork furnished to the NCMA. It is repeated in Shapley 1960; Shapley 1966; Yeide 2015. As noted by Yeide as well as in the Kress Digital Record, the painting does not appear in the sale catalogue of the David Lindsay/ Crawford and Balcarres estate sale held at Christie's, London, 11 October 1946. According to Charles Sebag-Montefiore, the painting is not listed in any of the inventories of the Lindsay family collection, and it unlikely to have entered and exited the collection within such a brief period of time (1931 to 1956).

[5] Kress digital record: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3323. Evidence for a connection between the International Financing Company and estate of Alessandro Contini Bonacossi is that Contini Bonacossi’s lawyer in New York, a man named Renzo Rava, of Florentine origin, is the attorney for Kress recorded in both letters and the invoice for the group of works purchased by the Kress Foundation in 1956 from the International Financing Company, Panama City.

[6] Kress digital record: https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/3323.
Published ReferencesAlgernon Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions 1812 - 1913, Vol. 4 (London: 1914), 1798.

Wilhelm von Bode, Botticelli (Berlin: 1926) 127, illus. 149 (as falsely ascribed to Botticelli).

Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian schools of Painting, Vol. 12 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), 269 (as school of Botticelli).

Richard Langton Douglas, Piero di Cosimo (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1946), 87- 88, illus. pl. 30 (as school of Botticelli).

The Samuel H. Kress Collection (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1960), 62, illus (color) 63 and front cover (as Botticelli).

Mandel cites Cartwright (1956), Reinach and Gebhardt.

Malcolm Vaughan, "Kress Gift to North Carolina," The Connoisseur 147, no. 593 (May 1961), 224-25, illus. 225.

Art Treasures for America (exhibition catalogue) (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1961), cat. no. 11.

[R. F. C.] "Raleigh: La collezione Kress di opere della Rinascenza italiana al North Carolina Museum," Emporium 134, no. 802 (October 1961), 174, illus. 175.

Paul Wescher, "Die Kress-Schenkung für Raleigh," Pantheon 21, no. 1 (Jan/Feb 1963), 11, illus.

Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: The Florentine School, Vol. 1 (London: The Phaidon Press, 1963), 38 (as Studio of Botticelli).

"Acquisitions," North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 4, nos. 2 and 3 (Winter-Spring 1964), listed 56.

Charles W. Stanford, Masterpieces in the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1966), no. 29, illus. (color).

Federico Zeri, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, 29-30 (1966-67) 65-66.

North Carolina Architect, 20th Anniversary North Carolina Museum of Art 1947-1967 (Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1967) 39. Artwork included without mention in writing.

Gabriele Mandel, The Complete Paintings of Botticelli (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1967), no. 126, illus. (as workshop).

Fern R. Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: The Italian Paintings XIII - XVI Century, Vol. 1 (London: The Phaidon Press, 1968), 122-23, illus. fig. 332 (as Botticelli and Assistants).

Ronald Lightblown, Sandro Botticelli, Complete Catalogue, Vol. 2 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1978), 134-35, illus. no. C.35 (as "a school-work of good quality of c.1490").

Gabriele Mandel, L'opera completa del Botticelli (Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1978), no. 126, illus. (as workshop).

Edgar Peters Bowron, ed., Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: published for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, by The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), illus. (b-w) 184.

Herbert Horne, Alessandro Filipepi, commonly called Sandro Botticelli, painter of Florence. Appendix III, Catalogue of the works of Sandro Botticelli, and of his disciples and imitators..., (Florence, 1987), no. 35, (as school of Botticelli).

Introduction to the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1992), illus. (b-w) 169.

David Steel, entry for The Adoration of the Child, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, Rebecca Martin Nagy, ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998), 126, illus. (color).

Jo Woestendiek, "What Child is This?", Winston-Salem, NC: Prime Times (November 15, 2000), discussed briefly 12, illus.

David Steel, "The Christmas Story in Art," Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art (November/December 2003), mentioned and illus. (color) 11.

Michelle Natale, "Take a seasonal respite in beauty," Raleigh: The News and Observer, "What's Up" insert (December 14, 2007), mentioned and illus. (color) 17.

Perri Lee Roberts, Corpus of Early Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections: The South, Vol. 3 (Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, 2009), discussed 610, illus. (b-w) 611.

David Steel, entry for The Adoration of the Child, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 264, illus. (color) 265.

Lyle Humphrey, "Saul Among the Prophets: W.R. Valentiner, Robert L. Humber, Carl W. Hamilton, and the Italian Collection at the NCMA," Lisandra Estevez, ed., Collecting Early Modern Art (1400-1800) in the U.S. South (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), 23, 39.Exhibition HistoryLondon, The New Gallery, "Exhibition of Early Italian Art," 1893-94, no. 130.

Washington, DC, The National Gallery of Art, "Art Treasures for America," December 10, 1961-February 4, 1962, cat. no. 11.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Becoming the NCMA: 10 Decades of Collecting, 1924-2022," June 11-August 21, 2022.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement

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